it's in with the new around the globe with the spectacular sort of rationing to america show you the highlights. to yourself looks at the legacy of twenty twelve that could have been if things had turned out differently and explores some of the challenges that might face in the coming months. and deal looks set to pull america from the edge of the fiscal cliff and the tax hikes for millions of americans for the time being at least.

forecasting live from moscow you're watching r t a very happy new year. well twenty thirteen has made it around the globe with an array of fireworks performances and cheering crowds take a look at how the world has been partying in new zealand. long the first twenty thirty. to enjoy the fireworks exploding over the city's sky tower australia join the festivities shortly with almost two million people gathering to see the now standard jaw dropping fireworks from harbor bridge as the clock struck midnight. new york continues triumphant march through asia with on the most spectacular veiling in hong kong countdown to twenty thirteen culminated in a night extravaganza on the land and in the sky and in europe and then picked up one of the top. on the world's largest open air parties at the brandenburg gate.

the u.k. pulled out all the stops and summarizing politics displaying the heart of the capital at the london eye and across the atlantic over a million spectators descend new york's times square to celebrate the event with the traditional drop of the crystal ball. here in russia the new year officially kicked off for the traditional china of the country's main clock one of the kremlin's towers revelers from across russia came to rest squared watch the counting minutes of fireworks about the iconic cathedral . there were mixed emotions regarding the year that's passed with some sad to see it end but many more hopeful that twenty thirteen will see better times. for takes a look at the world that could have been. twenty twelve was certainly full of disappointing headlines hope fueled by the arab spring turned into the turmoil of the arab autumn the war in syria claimed countless lives and

the fiscal crisis all the european union torn apart at its very seams and the problems facing our world today certainly don't offer themselves up to an easy fix what if things have turned out differently what if opportunities were actually a pawn instead of missed well here's our look at the twenty twelve headlines that could have been. diplomacy succeeds in syria ending bloody conflict. instead this was the image of syria the world saw increasingly violent clashes between government forces and the opposition had claimed more than forty thousand lives efforts to negotiate a diplomatic solution fell flat as divisions ripped apart both the country and the international community hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled to neighboring states where many have found conditions to be dismal meanwhile syria's war is threatening to spill over its borders as tensions escalate within and in the region

. of told me to try and sanction slashdot's iran's nuclear to accept. us rules to restrict foreign. mideast peace to israel links to state park whose palestine. yet this was the reality israel's assault on palestinian militants in the gaza israel's anti-missile shield repelled the most attacks on its territory but a strike claimed the lives of more than one hundred sixty palestinians many of them civilians despite harsh condemnation from many in the international community the war and israel's subsequent decision to construct three thousand new settlements effectively slammed the door shut to any prospects of peace. people power moment came. step aside and let democracy. get lost get my notorious kuantan of my prison permanently shot. euro zone cuts the cuts and lifts austerity. but the news of

austerity only tightened as deep public sector cuts brought thousands of angry demonstrators to the streets of greece spain italy and portugal. the worst economic crisis of a generation has battered the european union's very foundations exacerbating tensions between member states with some regions now desperately wanting out i grew up in a europe that was divided from east to west going to europe it is divided from the south and never at any point in the history of this union has there been more discord of rank that we cover to go corporate cash band for the campaign coffers as part of the us political clean. nearly here for u.k. british quit the european union. we can leaks founder julian the solyndra pointed un free speech and. instead a song remains a political refugee at ecuador's london embassy where he's been granted asylum he continues to fight extradition to sweden over alleged sex crimes charges that he

says are politically motivated and tied to his work in leaking international government secrets. the power of people speaking up and resisting together terrifies corrupt democratic power so much so that only people here in the west and the enemy of governments an enemy to be watched and enemy to be can for all and to be impoverished true democracy is not the white house true democracy is not camera true democracy is the resistance of people with the truth again flies from taria to right here in london. everyday ordinary people teach us that democracy is free speech and just sent. from heretics to hero american whistleblower bradley manning finally free. droning on the nation's agree to end iraq of remote control. egypt's arab spring sees

democracy defeat hardline islamist. the reality on the ground was anything but egyptian president mohamed morsi is fouled like power grab unleashed fury and frenzied street battles and a fast track constitutional overhaul referendum left a bitter opposition eager for change for them two thousand and twelve saw the arab spring transformed into an egyptian nightmare had a revolution to get rid of a tyrant the dictator. in the order to that we made elections the revolution and elections to choose someone to the present us turned out that this guy is also a tyrant himself but he's had lines may have been the stuff of imagination but that sea of twenty thirteen can bring any of them to life. r.t. moscow. where celebrations on capitol hill were delayed as lawmakers use the early

hours of twenty thirty to strike a crucial deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff the senate eventually agreed to halt the proposed tax hike which would have affected virtually every american worker but deal still has to go before the house of representatives later on tuesday economics expert max keiser told us that it's still too early to pop the champagne. some people call him the crazy kaiser mr max joining us good to see you max. two thousand and two thousand and thirteen a big happy new year to you there it's a really kevin and a nice to hear you know you never tell you what made you always go for the juggler with all the guests you have on the kaiser report is there anyone at this point you already are going up with two thousand and thirteen and he picked him in the future absolutely we're going after jamie diamond i don't think cops ready for. we're going to find him we're going to a lot of the prankster. this is the year we see pranksters in jail i sort of

started putting pranksters in jail now the rest of the world's going to stop putting pranksters in jail the fiscal cliff is just more theater from bankers and politicians trying to distract people from the underlying root catastrophe that is a bunch of hers and frankly who are manipulating the system day in and day out destroying the economy this fiscal cliff is just more drama more theater and it doesn't really focus on the true underlying problems and we're going to see more of this going forward in two thousand and thirteen anything about flecked attention from the mob what their pitchforks and torches there are coming after these people they want to just delay that day of reckoning for as many months as they can but that day's reckoning it twenty eight it's comic. one of the any kinds of that where there was one common you wish among europeans that their leaders might ease up on the cuts. all the government's listening well the truth is the government's come to

afford to listen. to one of our economic contributes to says countries are still heading down the wrong path he explains why shortly. it's been a tough twelve months for the world's top whistleblower so when the son spent talk of twenty twelve on the house arrest and the rest in the ecuadorian embassy in london correspondent sara firth has been following his ups and downs through the air. a lot of you say we did more in a year ot the most media organizations have done decades we've really had a front seat view of everything that's been going on we had him at the beginning of the year fighting that extradition to sweden we saw his the pill rejected we then saw that dramatic twist in the trial when he went into the i could do it embassy seeking asylum we. certainly the british media we see a lot of the cold on him quite viciously especially during the course of this year with movies. events happening surrounding. a lot of people who would put that down

payment simply to jealousy. well last year was a success for barack obama to secure his second u.s. presidency washington correspondent says he not only succeeded in snatching victory from arch rival mitt romney but also votes from a third party candidate. there were cheers of relief here when he won i would say because the alternative was thought to be so much worse many voted out of fear that romney could win for them he was another george w. bush so whether americans have fallen out of love with obama the two thousand and eight euphoria was gone that's for sure back then there were these crowds you know in the streets all across the country shedding tears of joy so bad in their view where eight years of bush presidency obama was greeted as the savior and then he went and saved the banks saved the auto industry something he took a special pride in during the election campaign but across the country people remained out of work and are still out of work so this time president obama ran

under the banner it could have been so much worse as you imagine it was not a banner for the national euphoria it was more like you have no choice but to choose me kind of something that shocked me was i was covering the election here it was it was the second debate between obama and romney i'm sure you remember if you remember that i just presidential nominee from the green party jule styne was arrested right outside the venue where the debate was taking place she was protesting her exclusion from the stage and nobody like no news channel kiran mentioned her arrest none and i was switching channels for hours to see if anything was said about that and you know he was nothing i can imagine what the reaction would be here in the states if a presidential candidate is the other big country was arrested in the media there would be but eventually but apparently it happens in the u.s. no big deal president kennedy's get arrested all the time right well there was some irony and yes anyway during the election campaign the mainstream media had been

focused on nothing else and no one else but these two candidates and we are t.v. as you remember of course saw the in saw an opportunity there to show what others don't and we posted the debate. well the end of the year so barack obama's victory overshadowed by the primary school shooting in connecticut it led the president to pledge an end to the epidemic of gun violence ortiz tom hartman takes a look at whether the land of the free is ready to do so its grip on the right to carry a firearm. my guess is what we're going to see is cosmetic change we're going to see probably the or the assault weapons ban come back they'll be a fair number of loopholes in it but you know the u.s. is not going to end up going the way that's what's a longer israel of daughter many most european countries have done australia when john howard was president one thousand nine hundred eight when there was a mass slaughter and then they said ok that's it we're going to buy back all the guns and it's not going to happen here there's just too much money being made with

guns insane supreme court or at least five right wing crazies out of the nine on the supreme court decided that even though the second amendment says in order to maintain a well regulated militia necessary for the for the security of a free state the right to you know you people have the right to own guns that's half of it the other half of it is that the supreme court also said that corporations interest groups lobbying groups billionaires can throw unlimited amounts of money in politicians. so searching among the russian opposition for one of the protest mood in the country lost steam in the past year the few minutes people vote on the one few people took part in government rallies and twenty twelve bus examines the activists actually know. also be a change of leadership in iran in twenty thirteen but it won't mean for the west that's just ahead.

wealthy british style. market. why don't what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger or a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines soon into the report. speak your language. programs and documentaries in arabic it's all here on. reporting from the world talks about six of the ip interviews intriguing story to tell you. the arabic to find out more visit arabic.

welcome back you're watching ulti. politics or kremlin return for the. fresh anti-government protest in twenty twelve although in numbers smaller than the year before political analysts watch developments in the heart of the rallies. in the way he sees the protest mood in russia panning out. i would say it's kind of bleak but not hopeless ok we didn't come up with any new ideas new organization new faces in the pussy riot is that we are of the opposition it's pretty dreadful situation for the russian people and political development in general here and there's there was political change in this country in

a positive change. the opposition as we head into the it's a very interesting question because i have gone to most of the major demonstrations and there were people there of goodwill in my opinion but then there were fascists there ok who were communists there and they were these are people there ok and it's your right to demonstrate i actually liked the idea but they didn't accomplish anything that i could see they had no organization no unifying ideas except for i don't like but a mere putin which is not a very it's not a political agenda there were a few protests which i was as well where it did seem like that was the method if you wanted to gain traction on this opposition movement do you see people coming out and take the train lost a lot of its novelty effect right now ok because political change takes years in years and years that have to be local this is what happens in political changes with countries that were what they were carrying at one time it takes a long time to get people involved in the process and that is happening very very

strongly there are some people who want to really fast and they don't want to do it through elections they want power because they want power because they believe they deserve it and what about the fact that we're not going to see any presidential elections of course that all led up to being elected a third term this protest and now they're kind of down now oh i would say to people i mean if you want to continue to protest in you know join a political party there are forty four of them now you have a choice ok get involved see one of the things i saw with a lot of the protesters is that they want someone else to do all the hard work ok they want to go out and wave a flag and say you know give out a slogan we don't want to do the hard nitty gritty work of political change and that's what we need to do i would be looking at the next parliamentary election. peter has been destructing russian and global politics in his cross talk series throughout the past twelve months and dot com has plenty of editions of the show for you to watch on the mount. iran chooses

a new president in june who damage in egypt has served his maximum two terms and there's little clue as to who will replace him to tackle almost inexorable tension with the west over terrans nuclear program where journalists are afshin rattansi who's often shared his insights on iran not he doesn't expect the new leader to bend to form well i think whoever we people of iran elect policy foreign policy terms things are going to be much the same people are already talking about the mayor of tehran at the moment i was in a job himself or as normally in a job as the mayor of tehran the new mayor of tehran ghalibaf and people are talking about him. perhaps winning in june because it's too early and is notoriously difficult to predict iranian elections as to whether they will be as hardline and again the terms of the terminology of western corporate media on this or a bizarre image of the islamic extremist in all sorts of different morning because

the point is iran is there to stay in terms of forging a very different type of developing nation economy because it has all the oil and has all those resources and it's not going to suddenly start changing things the way the i.m.f. or the way washington wants it to be. well as we kick off another year rest assured r.t. will be here to keep you up to date on t.v. course online so we're at twelve web sites where we've lined up expert opinion on the year's new challenges from money to military and politics to protests all that and more at o.t. dot com.

where europeans have a year of very uncompromising cuts to contend with which already saw plenty of street protests in the past year or so saying their own debt turned unemployment is one thing but investment advisor patrick young says none of it is enough to repair the country which remains the biggest headache. what's happened so far has been swinging cuts on the masses and we really haven't managed to make the remotest impact upon the whole nation itself greece is still fundamentally in a huge problematic situation dolls' not remotely have a functioning government system that fiscally is going to manage to organize itself in any which way possible to manage to get through the continuing swen cuts that need to take klyce and of course then we're looking at the whole issue of the demonstrators are the governments listening well the truth is the governments can't

afford to listen because what we're seeing within the european union even if the euro has survived miraculously for twelve months government has run out of money the european union's western socialist model of spending huge amounts of money borrowing even greater amounts of money and hoping to pay everything manyara or indeed thirty years from manion or simply does not work. but only three years ago arland was a bankrupt in receiving a beta to rescue its failed economy but despite this the very same country has just taken the six month presidency of the european council and artist or smith reports the celtic tiger has some hard graft ahead of it. it's all changed by the e.u. presidency as the takes over the six month rotating challenge on the first of january not the ovi choice islands one of the paid the countries that have the nice stable economies in europe and sure enough arlen's the country to take hold in the

presidency of the twenty seven nation bloc while being propped up by i.m.f. money so for the next six months the e.u. and systemic problems will be presided over by one of its weakest and most problematic members so what specific challenges does face in europe over the six months of its presidency first the european economy is slowing flaws and the crisis is nowhere near over secondly it must preside over leaders actually agreeing to an e.u. budget for the years two thousand and fourteen to two thousand and twenty something they've spectacularly failed to do so far and thirdly there is a problem coming from right here in london increasing british opposition to brussels and the threat to european cohesion that uses the irish government expects the e.u. presidency to coast in excess of seventy million euros money the country can ill

afford and what will it be spent on twenty four million on catering accommodation and transport for example and another twenty million extra government. the recent conflict in gaza is putting israel off running even more settlements in occupied palestinian territories that's despite saber rattling from hamas and fatah who are vying to rearm and defend themselves by no means a middle east reporter. lines will this means for the region's future. if you look at what's happening on the ground israel continues to announce a settlement construction and the palestinians continue to say that for as long as these announcements continue they will be no resumption of peace talks it wasn't so long ago that the palestinians were awarded upgraded status at the united nations but you cannot detract from the fact that we still have palestinian faction groups hamas and fatah who are essentially at each other's throats in less than

a month the israelis will go to the polls and by all predictions they will reelect the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu for another term of office and it doesn't seem as if he has an olive branch so certainly the prognosis for any kind of peace moves is far let's hope that as tough as it will be the two sides will find a way to work together happier. many maybe nursing a sore head right now but max and stacey are shoppers out of their hair a lot to you after the break stay with us. it's perched atop a jog trot under view from the tobolsk prevalence stretches as far as the eye can see. for a city that all of siberia for centuries. it lost its economic importance even

before it was bypassed but a chance i bear in railway but the a spiritual center. seems like these are a yearly occurrence thousands of all the docks worshippers themselves and blessid water to commemorate the baptism of jesus. in the fifteen eighties the russians had only just conquered siberia taking it from the muslims. surrounded by enemies to ball supposed to be their stronghold constructed on top of the city but soon enough it became an economic hub siberian fire was the oil of its time bringing in a third of all russia's state revenue but the balls location head of the says but the russians are the russian crowd who led a revolt against azhar and eight hundred twenty five known as the decembrists worse

than here in droves there they created a replica high society adopting the latest fashions as soon as they came out or at least once they made it from paris to siberia. but the city also serves up some bitter irony for the russian royal family after the bolshevik revolution. this is the office was nicholas the second spend most of the last year of his life his whole family had been exiled here they led a fairly comfortable existence this was a big house but they weren't allowed to see visitors or go outside themselves whilst leaving this ordinary normal countryside lifestyle they even had thoughts of a skate but within the year the saw in his family would be dead.

divine power in action activate. and. peace we are under the control of those governing the service of the space mafia. as found on that day the magnetic field of the sun will be. will create disappear. after the second coming it will be a beautiful place it will receive its glory it will be a renewed world and it will be a beautiful place. the first. little stuff to stay.

it's good business for us it's kind of like being a doctor you know if there's a disaster businesses. better unfortunately. i max kaiser welcome to the kaiser reporting welcome to twenty thirteen you know more than one hundred thirty years ago the outlawed jesse james when robbing a train you to tell the passengers and i quote we're not ordinary thing we're bold robbers the victims loved it and almost every single one of the victims you killed was unarmed yes the population adored him today the likes of jamie diamond and lloyd blankfein similarly enjoy celebrity status as bold robbers on arm you know as a pal these.